WIND Mobile Roaming Charges are FANTASTIC!

WIND is a brand new cellular carrier in Canada and is now live. Rather than just fitting in with the other Canadian carriers WIND is going all out to differentiate themselves and we as consumers are the beneficiaries.

We have already mentioned WIND’s plans but I wanted to clarify their roaming policy because it is VERY different and wonderful.

Obviously, as a new network WIND has a long way to go with coverage, and they know it. They will be focusing on major cities first and will build out as they are able. The solution they have for coverage outside of their network is to allow you to roam on other networks. Well, you can roam on other networks with other phones but are seriously scalped when you do!

When you are on the WIND network they call it “WIND Home Zone” and when you roam you are “WIND Away”. Your Home Zone if not at all limited to just the area you are in. Anytime you are connected to WIND, even if you are in a different city you are in the WIND Home Zone and get all of the features on your plan. WOW! It gets better though!

When you are “WIND Away” or are roaming on another network you will be paying a roaming charge of $.25 per minute…even if you are in the US! Told ya it gets better!

Currently when you go to the US you are dinged for $1 a minute and even with just a few calls you can come back from a vacation with a bill inflated by $50 to $100 or much worse. With WIND you will be 1/4th that cost, or $12.50 to $25. That makes a VERY big difference!

While it may sounds way too clichéd I would have to say that WIND is certainly the breath of fresh air we needed in Canadian cellular!
Reference Link

How To Hard Reset an Android Phone

If you have an Android phone you may at some point want to hard reset, or completely wipe out the phone to start from scratch.

Why would you want to reset? Well, you may want to start again with a fresh install or are having a problem with an installed app. You may have bought the phone from someone or all selling it. Sometimes it’s just nice to start all over.

When I got this LG Eve phone for review it had already been used by another writer who didn’t bother to (or didn’t know how to) reset the phone. As a result, I could have read her email, chatted with her friend, used her twitter account and so much more. Doh! Well, I didn’t do any of that, just set out to find out how to reset it to start fresh.

Those that have been Windows Mobile users may be looking for some kind of hardware key combination to hard reset the device, but it’s actually built into the OS. It’s just a little bit buried and took me a bit to find it.

Steps to hard reset Android:

1. Go to “Setting”.
2. Select “SD card & phone storage”.
3. Select “Factory data reset” which should be the last option.
4. Press the “Reset Phone” button.

Now you just wait for the phone to restart and you are all set to go. Ta da!

BTW, in case there is any confusion about this; this will wipe out everything from your phone. You should back up all information before going ahead with this. It won’t wipe out the information you have on services such as Gmail, or Google Calendar, contacts and such. As soon as you log in with your freshly reset phone you will have all your information back on your phone.

Post any questions in the comments here and we will help you out.